Andrew Sullivan and at least some of his readers are so anxious to discredit any Christian who opposes them on the matter of gay marriage that they're willing to say the vilest things to accomplish their mission.
James Dobson, who opposes gay marriage, has evidently been encouraging people to go to the Focus on the Family web-site to get a prefabricated letter to send to their congressman to express support for a Marriage Protection Amendment.
We think using a form letter is not the best way to influence one's representatives, but Sullivan and some of his readers have called it plagiarism, which Dobson denies. Because he denies that he is encouraging plagiarism Mr. Dobson is sent a letter like this one which Sullivan approvingly posts on his blog:
Why do "Christians" reserve the right to lie, cheat and steal when it suits their purposes, while turning around and decrying situational ethics and denial of truth?
I am referring to you and your organization's organized plagiarism campaign. Focus on the Family, under your direction, is encouraging people to copy material from its website, assemble it into letters and submit the letters to the editors of various newspapers under their signature.
Webster's Dictionary defines plagiarism as to "present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source." This is exactly what someone who copies material from your website, fashions it into a letter and submits it as their own work does.
When you tell people that what they're doing isn't plagiarism, you are lying. But then you're a "Christian," and as such you believe that the rules apply to everyone but yourselves. How sadly typical.
What's sadly typical is the puerile willingness of so many people to use invective as a substitute for lucid argument. Webster's College Dictionary defines plagiarism not as the mere use of someone else's material but rather as the unauthorized use of that material. Focus on the Family, as I understand it, is authorizing others to use their material. What they're doing may be counterproductive, it may be dumb, but it's not plagiarism.
This seems like such an obvious distinction that even a junior high student could understand it, but apparently it is complicated enough to have exceeded the cognitive powers of some of those, like Sullivan's reader, for whom insult is the polemical weapon of choice.